Ten years ago, League of Legends was a dream held by two gamers sharing an apartment in West Hollywood. Today, it is a game with more than 100 million monthly active players worldwide.
But for Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, founders of Riot Games, that number is a "trailing indicator", a reaffirmation of their player-first development approach rather than a key performance indicator they discuss internally.
More Technology Videos
- Video duration
- 03:34
Riot co-founders look back on 10 years
- Video duration
- 01:39
Mars mission plans unveiled
- Video duration
- 05:43
Discovering a new planet in No Man's Sky
- Video duration
- 04:16
Racing against a helicopter in Forza Horizon 3
- Video duration
- 05:36
Battling a deathclaw in Fallout 4
- Video duration
- 05:33
Rise of the Tomb Raider gameplay
- Video duration
- 04:20
Halo 5: Guardians gameplay
Riot co-founders look back on 10 years
Company behind the incredibly popular League of Legends started 10 years ago with two competitive gaming fans wanting to make a new kind of video game.
"We try to do great things for players", Merrill tells Fairfax, "and the belief is that if we deliver great experiences then those other things will take care of themselves."
League of Legends (often referred to simply as League) is a team-based, online game where each player on a team controls a champion with unique abilities. Champions start of fairly weak in each match, and the goal is to accumulate items and experience to increase your strength while working together to defeat the other team.
The game was designed to have a lot in common with sports from the get go. "There's this almost unlimited mastery curve to learn and to train and evolve against", says Beck. "It's a team game where you have a lot of the same emotions as sports".
Early on in development, Beck and Merrill realised they'd need to raise venture capital to put the kind of infrastructure in place they needed. They raised money from Benchmark Capital, Firstmark Capital and China's Tencent, allowing them to offer the game free to players and act more like sports commissioners than traditional game developers (Tencent would go on to buy all of Riot's equity by 2015).
In the beginning
Beck says the mantra of listening to and responding to the playerbase was there from the start, but that the pair didn't realise at first that their dream of running a game like a sport was possible. eSports were "really niche, especially outside of Korea", he says, but then a revelation came two years after the game launched in 2009.
"League's competitive scene had evolved essentially a ladder type of system, which begged for a playoff" says Beck.
"There needed to be a top level of play, and that sort of culminated with a tournament that put the best teams in the world together for our first competitive season, at a LAN party in Jönköping Sweden called Dreamhack.
"We had about 100 folding chairs at this event ... we were excited about it. But what blew us away is that 100,000 players tuned in on the stream [simultaneously], which at the time was a massive number that was completely unprecedented".
Beck says the success of that event, in 2011, gave them them confidence to chase their vision: high production sports broadcasts featuring League of Legends.
In 2012, the Season 2 World Championship was viewed online by 8.2 million people, and the prize pool had grown from less than $100,000 to $2 million, both figures that broke records for eSports at the time. Merrill says the event is one both founders look back on as a moment they realised their dream could be achieved.
"[The event] was held at the Galen Centre, which is the USC basketball arena in LA, and that was the first time Riot held an event in a big arena ourselves", he says.
Even though the grand final was between two Asian teams — the Taipei Assassins and Korea's Azubu Frost — "there were all these American fans painting their faces and screaming for the teams, just being crazy and being real sports fans. The energy in that arena was insane, and we both sat there and were like 'wow, this is a thing'".
In 2015, the Season Five World Championship finals in Berlin were watched by 36 million unique viewers.
Now in its sixth year, 2016's championships begin on September 29 and will take place across four stadiums in the US, including New York's Madison Square Garden and LA's Staples Center.
Creative fuel
Outside of competitive events, League is a huge cultural force that pervades corners of the internet and real life events like the various Penny Arcade Expos around the world.
"It's humbling to be at one of the cosplay events and see 150 people that have put all this time and effort into building these incredible renditions of our characters", Beck says. "There's no better creative fuel than for us to see players engaging with our content in those ways".
Riot's properties also show up frequently in fan art, YouTube sketches and musical interpretations.
"Experiencing the passion of the community in a creative sense is super awesome", says Merrill. "And that passion also then manifests as eSports fandom. Excitement for players, people wearing jerseys and painting their faces. It's a different manifestation of that same passion. I don't think we ever imagined that League would create that sort of excitement. It keeps us getting out of bed every day.
These days even regional competitive events can attract hundreds of thousands of fans, but on the other end of the scale new teams of amateurs are being created all the time, making a unique challenge for the game's custodians.
"Getting the game super accessible to play without watering down the depth is hard. And in some cases just not possible", Beck says.
"We intend to continue to try to make League as welcoming as we possibly can, but we're not willing to compromise on the quality and depth of the competitive experience".
Merrill believes that as the community grows the issue will be dealt with in the same way as in traditional sports, with people being socialised into familiarity with the rules and techniques.
Kids can grow up learning the basics of a sport and having a good time with friends, he says, "but by the time you get into [a professional league] there are deep strategies that are incredibly nuanced, and the skill level of each individual position is incredibly deep, not to mention the team strategies".
Global eSports commissioners
The other big challenge is constantly refining and reinventing elements of a game people are constantly playing to keep things fun ("building the plane in mid-air while we're flying", Beck says), while also being across the high-stakes world of professional gaming.
"It's awkward, honestly. "It thrusts us into this position of commissioning and managing various leagues throughout the world", says Beck.
"We'd be happy to not play that role in the long run".
"It's a governance role", Merrill adds, "which is not something that we necessarily aspired to be in. It's having to create league rules to have a healthy ecosystem, and that means sometimes people are in violation of those rules and you need to enforce them with the goal of protecting players".
"Historically it's been difficult to find talent to navigate these problems as well. It's not like you could go on to LinkedIn for many years and find eSports on people's resume. So we had to get pretty clever and grow a lot of capabilities in order to do that well, while continuing to focus primarily on building a great game experience".
As for what's next for Riot, Beck says the company is working on "additional products", but not to hold your breath.
"We don't think the world needs more games that are kind of rushed out there", he says.
"We still have this massive obligation to the community that's around League, to continue to support it and help deliver the kinds of things that our players want to see", Merrill says.
"There's still a massive list of things we want to get to".
0 comments
New User? Sign up